Like many students on campus, I am a BIG fan of Chipotle (more like slightly obsessed, but we won’t get into that). However, in addition to delicious burritos, bowls and salads, I can give all of you readers another reason to love this company—their business model completely revolves around sustainability! Just visiting the Chipotle website (which I do often to pre-order my food online) you can find an entire section called “food with integrity,” which delves into their sustainability endeavors.
Chipotle is passionate about providing organic, family farmed, and local food for all of their loyal customers—demonstrating its dedication to sustainability and health, in addition to profit. Furthermore, Chipotle works very hard to ensure that the chicken, pork, and beef it uses comes from naturally raised animals—animals that aren’t locked up in pens or fed antibiotics. According to the website, there are times when they cannot ensure that their meat is naturally raised and in these instances they always put signs up within their store.
However, I think it is still phenomenal that a corporation as large as Chipotle, and one that is considered a fast food chain, is taking so many steps towards being environmentally conscious.
Overall Chipotle provides an excellent example of how to merge sustainability with success, even in big business. I am sure Chipotle is not perfect (although who knows because it seems pretty close), it is definitely a restaurant option in Oxford that I am happy to support. It’ll be interesting to see if they continue to take progressive steps towards health and environmental awareness as they continue to expand.
For now I think their green efforts can make us all feel even better about stuffing our faces with burritos.
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